refragable proof that their
country was always in a flourishing condition, and possessed a
considerable commerce with other nations. The Egyptians, however, had as
great an aversion to foreign traders as to shepherds; and it was long
before they undertook any work for improving their commercial
communications. At length, however, the canal, which had been carried as
far as the longitudinal valley between the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean, began to excite their attention as affording a cheap
means of transport for that portion of the produce of the country which
was purchased by the inhabitants of Arabia and of the shores of the Red
Sea. We have the testimony of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, that the
project of forming a canal to unite the Nile with the Red Sea was
entertained by Sesostris.[1] Aristotle says, "that Egypt, the most
ancient seat of mankind, was formed by the river Nile, as appears from
the examination of the country bordering on the Red Sea. One of the
ancient kings attempted to form a navigable communication between the
river and the sea; but Sesostris, finding that the waters of the Red
Sea were higher than those of the Nile, both he and Darius, after him,
desisted from the attempt, lest the lower part of the delta should be
inundated with salt water." It is extremely difficult to ascertain what
king is meant by Sesostris, since that name seems to have been given by
the Greeks to more that one of the distinguished monarchs of the
country. Aristotle, however, clearly refers in his account to the king
he calls Sesostris, and to an earlier monarch. The one may have been
Sethosis, who reigned about B.C. 1291, and the other, Sesonchis of
Bubastes, the Shishac of Scripture, in the year B.C. 976. These
sovereigns may have converted the canal of irrigation into a regular
commercial route; and the last may have commenced the greater work of
connecting it with the bitter lakes. The fear of inundating the Delta
with salt water, by cutting through the northern shore of the Red Sea,
and allowing a communication with the bitter lakes to remain always
open, has been shown by the French engineers, whose report is printed
in the great work on Egypt, to be no idle fear.[2]

[1] Arist. Meteorol. i. 14. Strabo, lib. i. c. 2, vol. i. p. 60; lib.
xvii. c. 1, vol. iii. 443.--Ed. Tauch. Plinii Natur. Hist., lib. vi. 33.

[2] _Memoire sur la communication de la Mer des Indes a la Mediterranee,
par la Mer Rouge et l'Isthme de So